The new revival of Punky Brewster on Peacock seems to have copied more than a few things from Netflix's own classic sitcom reboot Fuller House. Following Fuller House's success, it's really no surprise that other streaming services have taken its cues in an attempt to find a similar nostalgic hit.
The original Punky Brewster was a popular sitcom that aired on NBC from 1984 to 1988. It followed the life of a young girl named Penelope "Punky" Brewster after she was abandoned with her dog in a shopping center parking lot by her mother. The show focused on her time living in foster care and it proved to be a huge success, even spawning its own animated spinoff. The new revival series is a sequel to the original, and brought back both Soleil Moon Frye as Punky and Cherie Johnson as her lifelong best friend. It was created specifically for NBCUniversal's new streaming service Peacock as part of a ploy to bring in subscribers with familiar and appealing nostalgic content.
This is not the first time that a streaming service has tried that strategy. Netflix did the same thing when they revived Full House in 2016 with its own sequel series Fuller House. These two shows are obviously similar, in that they are both reboots for '80s sitcoms thirty years after the originals went off the air, but the similarities don't stop there. The focus for both of the reboots is that of a character who was a child in the original, who is now an adult and played by the same actress, who is newly a single parent and has to raise three kids with the help of their old childhood friends. It seems clear that Peacock wanted their own Fuller House, and since they have access to the vast library of shows that have aired on NBC over the years it was only a matter of picking one that could fit into a similar enough mold to be successful. These aren't the only recent examples, either. Shows like Girl Meets World, Saved by the Bell, and Roseanne also sell themselves on similar premises of returning actors put into familiar settings and situations.
This practice, of course, is nothing new in the entertainment industry these days. While Hollywood has always tried to mine an audience's nostalgia in order to make money, in recent years with the rise of streaming services it's become more frequent and with more obscure properties. Every new streaming service has to try to draw in potential subscribers to compete with sites like Netflix, Shudder, Hulu, and others. They each need a wide range of content that could appeal to a wide range of people. Not every company has access to a content library as extensive as Disney+ or HBOMax, so when a company like NBCUniversal sees that Netflix has a bonafide hit with reviving an old sitcom they think they can do the same. That's how a show like Punky Brewster can get a revival. Not only is it a reboot of a known property, but also a show that copies the formula of another reboot of an entirely different property.
Fuller House, despite being poorly received when it first premiered, was still a hit for Netflix and lasted five seasons. The new Punky Brewster may be exactly what NBCUniversal wants and maybe it really can draw in new subscribers for Peacock, even with all the complaints that it's merely copying a formula that audiences are already much too familiar with.